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The ethics of "free" e-books


Larry.

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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1450339' date='Jul 22 2008, 12.24']I see no hope.[/quote]

Holy crap, let's not carve the tombstone for professional writing just yet! We have author's reading this thread, we don't want them reaching for the razor blades.

[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1450339' date='Jul 22 2008, 12.24']So I assume that writing will (again) be a hobby for the rich. It's been that way before, and there is no outside reason for assuming that culture won't revert back to that model. More and more stuff will be provided by amateurs or dilettantes (in the non-derogatory sense of the word), who do it for passion rather than money. For a concrete example, look at how [i]encyclopaedias[/i] are written today, or who wrote the code for your web browser.[/quote]

Everybody seems to be assuming that the public will not pay for things if they can get them for free. If that were true Apple's iTunes store wouldn't be selling any songs, everybody would be downloading mp3s via torrents instead. iTunes is proof that people will pay for content if you price it at a sensible level and make it easily accessible.

I'm convinced that people want to give authors money to write books. As long as you make it easy for them to acquire the book, easy for them to pay you and if the price isn't too onerous then most will buy, because it's easier than tracking down an illegitimate copy and it is [i]fair[/i].
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Let's not forget that most people who read books for enjoyment are usually people who can say "I dont buy books=Author get no money=Author doesn't write books", even if there are that crazed few who do it because they enjoy it.
Freaks.
;)
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[quote name='Geddon' post='1450366' date='Jul 22 2008, 05.02']Everybody seems to be assuming that the public will not pay for things if they can get them for free. If that were true Apple's iTunes store wouldn't be selling any songs, everybody would be downloading mp3s via torrents instead. iTunes is proof that people will pay for content if you price it at a sensible level and make it easily accessible.[/quote]

I totally agree with this. While I WILL NOT buy DRM'ed songs from iTunes because I find it ethically and morally wrong make people pay over and over and over again if something were to happen to their data. I have however purchased several CD's in mp3 format from Amazon and have no issue with them. I know they're probably watermarked but I don't do P2P sharing so that won't be an issue. I can back them up though and move them around from device to device without fear of only having a certain amount of "authorized" devices .. this is the main difference.

If books go digital then I would certainly purchase them if they were in a format such as PDF or ODF. I suppose that would be the end of the collector in me because who wants to collect PDF files they just do not look good on a shelf. ;D
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[quote name='Dylanfanatic' post='1448256' date='Jul 20 2008, 23.35']It's a subject that's been on my mind [url="http://ofblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/ethics-of-free-e-books.html"]recently[/url], but I'll ask it here in a briefer form: What do you feel about people getting e-books via less-than-legal ways? Have you done it yourself? If so, was it done just to sample a book? Did you tend to buy the book afterwards?[/quote]
I've only done it a few times. Usually it's because I already own the book, but I've loaned it out to someone, and I'm really dying to do a re-read (ASoIaF comes to mind, I think I've loaned and lost at least four copies of A Game of Thrones).

Or, out of print books. But those are hell to find online as well, so I've just stopped bothering.
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There is also the {legal} e-books on the net...

Quite often they are fan-fic sites that have thousands of free novels some of them quite good...but you do have to pick and choose...

Blackmask...Guttenburg.... Classic literature...the female sensation novelists of 19th century england...etc...
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[quote name='aergern' post='1450493' date='Jul 22 2008, 15.51']I totally agree with this. While I WILL NOT buy DRM'ed songs from iTunes because I find it ethically and morally wrong make people pay over and over and over again if something were to happen to their data.[/quote]
[i]Ethically and morally wrong[/i]? With a straight face? C’mon. If “something happens” to your hardcovers, you’re expected to buy them over and over again. If something happened to your vinyl LPs (like, playing them more than 20 times) you were expected to buy them again. That was [i]ethically wrong[/i]?
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I moaned for days of the loss of my Linkin Park discs to the old Breakitis, and I haven't replaced them.
Probably because they're by Linkin Park.
But, I agree. I have replaced books and discs when I cared enough.
And I am trying to replace Deathnote 1. I just can't seem to get to one of the many (1. maybe 2) Manga stores in Israel.
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1450760' date='Jul 22 2008, 12.19'][i]Ethically and morally wrong[/i]? With a straight face? C’mon. If “something happens” to your hardcovers, you’re expected to buy them over and over again. If something happened to your vinyl LPs (like, playing them more than 20 times) you were expected to buy them again. That was [i]ethically wrong[/i]?[/quote]

While I agree that morally wrong might be pushing it, with a computer, you can just redownload. You can't pull a new hardcover out of the ether, but if your hard drive crashes, or you delete a file accidentally (pretty easy to do in iTunes) you should be able to get a re-download, because it's just that easy. They should be pushing the strengths of the medium, not adding random restrictions
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With a book, it a self contained delivery system. The book is the system, and the system is the book. If it is damaged, you can't read it again.

On the other and the e-book readers are only artefacts for trasnlating the binary files into a readable medium. Binary files that could and should be read in others ways than the aproved monopolistic way.

Fuck the Apples of the world.
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[quote name='The Pita Enigma' post='1450357' date='Jul 22 2008, 06.50']There's a feeling in a book. When you read a heavy book, you know you're going to enjoy it.[/quote]

Not true. I can name several books I didn't enjoy. Many of them quite thick and ponderous.

But if you want, we could make the reader extra heavy for you. ;P

[quote]There's that joy of knowing exactly how far along you are in the book by looking at the bookmark. Reader saying "Page 324 out of 683" means nothing, even if I knew math better. It's a number, not something you can look at and say "I'm halfway through the book!"[/quote]

I see no reason why a reader couldn't have a percentile display if you wanted it. I tend to rely on the little scroll bar at the side myself, rather than the page number.

[quote]Also, you can't read a computer while you're on the toilet.[/quote]

Want a picture? Or will you just take my word? (Please say the latter).

[quote]I just see no point in downloading the books for free. For the extra 60 NIS it costs me, I'll own the book, thank you verra much.[/quote]

The advantage to e-books isn't the cost savings. Bigger advantages I'd say include:

Searchability. Ctrl-F is wonderful.
Portability. How many thousands of books can you carry around?
Reformatability. Text too small? Ugly font? Easy as pie to fix!
Space-saving. I've got several shelves full of books. Not very convenient.
Durability. Books get ruined (yes, I've dropped some in the toilet, but even normal wear and tear is a bad thing), but aside from obnoxious DRM, one can back-up, store, and transfer e-books all you want. Quite convenient.

That said, there's certainly something to be said for lower distribution costs lowering expenses. And less paper being used which might please some environmentalists.

[quote name='Serious Callers Only' post='1450996' date='Jul 22 2008, 13.03']Fuck the Apples of the world.[/quote]

I'm scared of what I might catch.
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Mine Has no Pages! And it has a percentage! In the last version! Please try it
~!~

And don't turn off your computer without closing the program first. It's a ... persistent... bug.

Java 6 required (actualy 5 but you'll like it more on six).

[url="http://code.google.com/p/bookjar/downloads/list"]http://code.google.com/p/bookjar/downloads/list[/url]
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[quote name='Mister Manticore' post='1451007' date='Jul 22 2008, 20.08']The advantage to e-books isn't the cost savings. Bigger advantages I'd say include:
[...][/quote]
Another advantage is compressibility. A medium size storage device would hold [i]a genre[/i] – you could fit something like 10,000 books on a 10 GB drive. Imagine if this was [i]also[/i] easy to download, akin to the ease with which digital music or films are downloaded semi-legally today. Want to read fantasy? Just a few mouse-clicks, some waiting, and you have the entire canon, from Zelazny to Abercrombie. You can keep it with you at all times. Airplane, commute, toilet.

Who would [i]not[/i] do this? Seriously? Compared to buying individual books?

As for tactile sensations or aesthetics, nobody is kidding me. For (say) 1000$ (a small investment for a bibliophile) I could easily imagine an e-book reader that is much nicer than 99.99% of all books ever sold. By the way, most books are [i]crap[/i]. I actually enjoy well-produced books. Canvas or leather hardbacks, smythe sewn, book-mark, etc. I pay attention to typefaces and ligatures, to margin sizes, to paper quality, etc. Thus, almost every book I buy is a disappointment. If I could buy a sleek gizmo that actually is a joy to handle, the physical pleasure of reading an e-book would be manifold the joy I get from handling a book: basically [i]I[/i] get to decide the quality of the reading experience when I shell out the money for a really classy device (leather! ultra-expensive electronic ink! or shiny-shiny chrome! or it could be pink!), instead of having such issues decided by the publisher on a book-by-book basis.

Not yet. But in 10 years? Extrapolating the iPod Touch from 1998 would be equally impossible.
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[quote name='Happy Ent' post='1451141' date='Jul 22 2008, 14.48']Another advantage is compressibility.[/quote]

I covered that under portability, though I did neglect to add wireless capacity, which ups the possible number of books to near-infinite.

[quote]Not yet. But in 10 years? Extrapolating the iPod Touch from 1998 would be equally impossible.[/quote]

I dunno, Tri-corders maybe? It's not like touch-sensitive screens haven't been around for a while.
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Just like libraries, free ebooks are promotion to me. I've bought multiple books due to the Internet. I'd have bought more, but some are out of print.

The most extreme example is The Night Land, which is in public domain. I printed out all 500 pages of it, bought a big ring-binder especially for the book, and went to trouble of making holes into every page so I could put it into the ring-binder. All so that I wouln't have to read something of that length on computer screen, although the ring-binder wasn't exactly ergonomic either. At the time when I did that, The Night Land was out of print, as was The House on the Borderland, which I had read it as a translation many years earlier and which I had been unable to forget. Then when Fantasy Masterworks released their William Hope Hodgson book I bought it without hesitation.
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It's rather disappointing that of all his novels, it's Peter F. Hamilton's worst - [i]Misspent Youth[/i] - that's actually coming true. In that book he envisages a future where there are no commerically-released novels, no major computer games, no professionally-released music, no big-budget movies. The proliferation of super-bandwidth Internet a hundred times faster than what we have now makes it impossible to protect copyrights any more. No-one can make any money out of the entertainment industry any more, so new fiction, new music and new computer games only appear if someone wants to make them in their spare time and give them away for free.

It's a bleak and hopefully ridiculously overstated worst-case scenario - music at least should survive commercially if only for the live experience - but there is the feeling that that could be the way things are going. Ironically, it isn't presented as a totally bad experience, since in the book people go out more, get more exercise, get drunk with their mates down the pub more often and seem to get laid a hell of a lot more often (that may just be because it's a PFH novel though).
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I still think this dystopian e-book stealing culture isn't going to happen, personally. Music pirating has almost become [i]trendy[/i] but look at books. You can barely get most people to read, I would think those that do read are intellectual enough to support the authors.
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In this post, Neil Gaiman posts the results of giving away American Gods for free online:

[url="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/results-of-free.html"]http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/results-of-free.html[/url]

'Given that Harper Collins sold a lot more of all my books while the free American Gods was out there, with sales of all my titles up 40% through independent bookshops, I think I can safely say that we'll be doing it -- or rather, something similar -- again. And that the 56% of people who didn't enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how we do it next time out.'
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[quote name='Intercept' post='1451726' date='Jul 23 2008, 04.38']In my opinion it's really no different from me going to the library. The difference is simply the convenience.[/quote]
Not clear what you’re saying here. The library [i]pays[/i] the author. When you “freely” copy an electronic text the author doesn’t get paid, which is the topic of this thread. (But maybe I misunderstand you and you were comparing different things.)
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[quote name='Werthead' post='1451583' date='Jul 23 2008, 02.51']It's a bleak and hopefully ridiculously overstated worst-case scenario - music at least should survive commercially if only for the live experience - [...][/quote]
Depends on the type of music. I listen mostly to what you might call “classical” music. It requires dozens and dozens of performers with years and years of education. (Many more if you look at [i]opera[/i].) There’s no way to pay for that through live performances.
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